As shown in FIG. 1, radio broadcasters' listening areas are associated with a metropolitan area or geographic region 100. However, many listening areas 100 include geographic, geological or man made obstacles or regions 110 that impede the effective transmission of a radio broadcast signal from the main transmitter(s) 120.
These obstacles 110 result in “dead zones,” 130 in which a radio broadcast signal cannot be effectively received by a radio listener's radio receiver.
It should be appreciated, as well, that the frequency and mode of modulation being used by the radio broadcaster's signal will affect the amount of signal reduction in a unique way. Thus, a dead zone for one particular FM frequency may be somewhat different than for another FM frequency. Likewise, the dead zone for an AM frequency may be somewhat different than for another AM frequency. Likewise, FM and AM frequencies may be more or less susceptible to signal reduction depending on other environmental issues including time of day, weather, presence of foliage on trees, etc. These discrepancies are well known in the art.
However, due to these factors and the configuration of terrain topology in a particular listening area, conventional use of booster or translator technology can result in signal interference issues that exacerbate the problem of weak radio signal delivery rather than providing improvement. Thus, for example, as shown in FIG. 2, the use of a conventional booster transmitter 140 results in providing a receivable signal in some portion of a dead zone 150 but also one or more interference zones 160 that suffer from interference resulting from the interaction between the signal of the main transmitter 120 and the signal transmitted by the booster transmitter 140.